Football is a beautiful game on TV, and TV is only getting better. So much better, NFL – owners feat its live audience will become empty TV studios. / Enquirer file photo

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The NFL is too good for its own good. At least that’s what its owners believe.

The owners aren’t worried about fan interest, generally. They’ve got a nation so hooked, it will spend precious weekend hours on the couch, watching the scouting combine or the draft. The NFL is a marketing and advertising lollapalooza. Fans aren’t the problem.

Fans in the stands are.

This is unique to pro sports. You wouldn’t dream of watching a Rolling Stones concert from your basement, if you could buy a ticket. You like opera or a musical, do you get more satisfaction from seeing it at Music Hall or the Aronoff? Or on public television? Nobody ever says, “Honey, there’s going to be a Grant Wood exhibit at the art museum. Make sure we set the DVR.’’

Football’s blessing is becoming its curse. It’s a beautiful game on TV, and TV is only getting better. So much better, league owners fear that their stadia – already TV studios, complete with a live audience – will become empty TV studios.

All the replays. All the angles. All the Wi-fi you want. If you attend a Bengals game now, you understand that, often, sending a single text message can take a whole-first-quarter effort. They want to fix that. Streaming video, full 4G capability. Video boards to make Vegas blush. And so on. It’s possible that the next generation of football fans will attend the game and not see it. Their eyeballs will be attached to their iWhatever, even as the game plays out in front of them. If it didn’t happen on the SmartPhone, did it really happen?

If you are of a certain age, maybe you think this is all nonsense. Cool nonsense. Fun, innovative, experience-enhancing nonsense. But nonsense nevertheless. In Atlanta, they’re talking about installing “vibrating rumble seats.’’

I’m sorry. Did I just step into a 1970s disaster movie? Look, there’s O.J. Simpson, running for his life in The Towering Inferno!

The Cowboys have a video board that could blot out the sun. If it ever fell from the roof to which it’s attached, we’d all get a firsthand look at Middle Earth. In Houston, they’re planning a board that’s 30 percent larger than that.

If you can’t watch the game on TV when you’re at the stadium, what’s the point? Attending in person means nothing without your personal stash of quality electronics. Kids have this conversation all the time now:

“Wait. You’re actually going to the game? Dude, why?’’

(By the way: The Bengals lease entitles them to periodic video “enhancements’’ at taxpayer expense. A new scoreboard would be a $10 million item, give or take. The club has made no such request, yet. Kudos.)

Notions of camaraderie and collective suffering? Can we get that on Facebook? Tailgates and the ritual gathering of long-time friends mean nothing if we can’t stream them live.

Used to be, going to the games was a big deal. My dad had Washington Redskins tickets for a couple decades. He took me. The same people held the same seats, year after decade. You’d climb the concrete steps to Section 526 that first game in September, and get reacquainted with old friends. Collective suffering abided, and it was good.

When the Redskins broke through and beat the hated Cowboys to get to the Super Bowl in ’72, we drank champagne in 526, poured in plastic glasses. It was a common, earned joy.

Not now, brotha.

It’s difficult to party when you’re hooked up to your vibrating rumble seat, posting pictures on Facebook.

We made memories at the games. Has anyone ever turned to his father and said, “Remember all those great times we had in the family room, Pops, watching the Bengals on television?”

If you’d like a bonding experience and some collective joy, go to the stadium and leave the iPad at home. If you expect a TV-quality experience, stay home and watch TV. You can’t have both. Even with 4G capability.